Avis Metacritic

Punchline is never less than compelling, never less than smart. Seltzer and company have made a disturbingly entertaining movie about the manic-depressive world of comedy. [26 Sept 1988, p.58]

It’s an uneven melodrama where Tom Hanks exhibits flashes of brilliance as a caustically tongued stand-up comic in a strange, undefinable romance with protege Sally Field.

Although PUNCHLINE occasionally falters--in its contrived contest ending and saccharine tendencies--it is still an engaging and honest achievement.

The road to stand-up Oz is littered with conventional, sentimental banana peel; writer/director David Seltzer avoids much, but not all, of it. His biggest slip-up is creating an unlikely relationship between Hanks and Field. Gold is a young, starving, responsibility-evading, med-school dropout who has psychic energy only for great comedy. As frumpy, mousey, older, married mother Lilah -- who thinks she just might be able to do that comedy thing -- Fields couldn't be more of a mismatch.

The problem may be that the movie isn’t nearly tough enough. It needs to be more hard-boiled, more merciless in its dissection of egos, more perceptive about the cutthroat nature of show business.

Tepid...A big Punchline problem is that it's impossible to tell the difference between Miss Field's routines that are supposed to be awful, and the awful ones that are supposed to be funny.

Despite a strong cast, an exceptional performance by Tom Hanks and several strong moments, Punchline never makes the transition from concept to movie. Directed and written by David Seltzer ("Lucas"), it's a film that must strain mightily to cast its promising but vague subject-stand-up comedy- into dramatic terms, and it dips more than once into soapy contrivance. [30 Sept 1988, p.A]

It's not surprising that Punchline is mostly banal; it's constructed on a banality -- namely, that clowns suffer.

The bedgraggled plotting forces Hanks into maudlin situations, but he manages to get under some of his material and darken it.

One problem here is that the jokes aren't funny; another is that Sally Field is funny by mistake.